The present invention relates to vehicular braking force control method and vehicular braking force control apparatus in which a braking force is controlled in accordance with a brake operation by a vehicle driver, in other words, a, so-called, brake-by-wire is performed.
A Japanese Patent Application First Publication No. Heisei 11-301434 published on Nov. 2, 1999 exemplifies a previously proposed vehicular braking force control apparatus. In the previously proposed braking force control apparatus disclosed in the above-described Japanese Patent Application First Publication, a target braking force is calculated on the basis of a master cylinder pressure and a stroke of a brake pedal and a vehicular braking force is controlled in accordance with the target braking force. Contribution degrees of the master cylinder pressure and the pedal stroke are modified in accordance with at least one of the master cylinder pressure and the pedal stroke. Especially, at an initial stage of a pedal depression, the contribution degree of the pedal stroke is made larger than the contribution degree of the master cylinder pressure. This is because there is a general tendency that the vehicle driver tries to mainly adjust the pedal stroke at a low deceleration region in which a desired deceleration is low and tries to mainly adjust a pedal depression force at a high deceleration region in which the desired deceleration is high.